A Lot Of Desserts To Fill

This morning I got in at 10:30, knowing we were expecting eighty diners tonight. And plus, it’s my fourth last day of work, so I may as well make it a long day. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be there yet, but the sous chef was in. He told me I would be on my own today for orders, and said it not like he didn’t think I could handle it, but like it was a big feat. Like I hadn’t been on my own on pastry the past three weeks. He said I had to have everything done though – that I couldn’t suddenly realize I was in the shits during service, so he said if I found myself in the shits today, to let them know in plenty of time so someone could help me with prep. I said yes, but I knew I wouldn’t ask for help. I don’t let myself get in the shits. I got a lot done on Thursday and was in good shape. If I thought I was at all in the shits, I would have come in yesterday on my day off, even if just for a couple of hours. That’s just how I am.

Every day I (try) to scoop a bunch of perfect quennelles of sorbet. This one is not perfect (and I also did not scoop it, I ate it). It's harder than it looks!

So I got to work – since I was in nice and early, I decided to make another batch of chocolate soufflé mousse since we had a bunch of diners on the reduced menu tonight and that would be popular, and mousse is quick and easy to make but you can’t just whip some out of nowhere in the middle of service. While that was on the go, I scooped the raspberry sorbet, and cut fruit and assembled fruit flowers for the crème brulée garnish. I moved on to baking and traying petit fours, slicing cheese and getting everything ready for cheese plates, and making passionfruit jelly. Then it was time to start breads, since I had extra big batches to roll (tomato basil, onion, herb and cheese). When breads were done, I prepped the desserts and petit fours for a special dietary requirements (gluten free and dairy free), and made up birthday and anniversary plates for several of the diners tonight. I cut up some passionfruit, cleaned up, and set up, and was ready to go!

During service, I didn’t have as much to do at first, because there was another chef helping with apps, veg, and starters, so I was the runner (running for things we needed last minute). But I did get a lot of pastry orders, and a variety of them. And there were several large groups – a four, a five, a six, a ten, and a fourteen, among a bunch of twos. But I handled them all myself. I would say service went fairly smoothly for a busy night, even among a few strange diner requests, except when the chef on mains didn’t cook a beef medium-rare or something, and instead of just cooking it straight away since that table’s orders were going out, the sous chef spent five minutes giving out to him. At that point, I was helping to clean the starter section and just tried to stay out of the way.